Exhibit honoring first black Army colonel coming to Rockford

ROCKFORD — More than 1 million men and women passed through Camp Grant during its 29-year history as a military installation center.

But few were more distinguished — and yet obscure — in the pages of American history than Col. Charles Young.

Born in 1864 to enslaved parents in Kentucky, Young became the third black cadet to graduate from West Point in 1889.

Young’s education and leadership training at the academy were the foundation for a military career that saw the former Buffalo Soldier rise to the rank of colonel, the highest-ranking black commanding officer in the U.S. Army.

Young’s military career also included a brief stint in late 1918 at Camp Grant.

The Coalition of Black Veterans Organizations, in conjunction with the African-American Gallery of the Ethnic Heritage Museum, will present the Col. Charles Young bronze maquette from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at Veterans Memorial Hall, 211 N. Main St.

The scaled-down statue depicting Young on horseback is on loan from the African-American Museum and Library in Oakland, California, and will be on display at Memorial Hall throughout June.

The maquette also serves as a model for the life-size statute that the Coalition is working to erect in Washington, D.C.

Michael Williams, a former Rockford School Board president, said that it was not lost on him that Young not only faced enemy combatants abroad, but he also faced racism at home and within the military.

“It had to be very challenging,” he said.

Charles Blatcher III, Coalition chairman and former Rockford resident, arrived Thursday in Rockford from California for Saturday’s ceremony. He said that a national movement is underway to promote Young, posthumously, to the rank of brigadier general.

“Due to the time period, he was denied the opportunity,” Blatcher said. “We’re asking the president to award him in death what he was denied in life.”

According to a March 25, 2013, presidential proclamation, Young established his career between 1889 and 1907, serving in the 9th Cavalry as a second lieutenant.

During the Spanish-American War he was commissioned as a major in the volunteers and commanded the 9th Ohio Volunteer Infantry Battalion. After the war, Young was promoted to captain in 1901. Young saw combat in the Philippine Islands and returned with the 9th Cavalry to California where his troop was selected as honor guard for the visiting President Theodore Roosevelt, the first time that black soldiers served in that capacity.

Young later was sent to Sequoia and General Grant national parks where he served as acting superintendent and earned the respect of both the African-American troops and white construction crews that he directed.

In July 1917, Young was retired by the military for medical reasons, but he was promoted to colonel in recognition of his distinguished career.

Local historian Terry Dywer, who is co-authoring a book on Camp Grant, said that Young was not ready to retire, and at the age of 54 he rode 500 miles on horseback from his home state of Ohio to Washington, D.C., to prove to the military he was still fit to serve.

Days before the Nov. 11, 1918, armistice, Young was assigned for a few months to Rockford’s Camp Grant where he trained black servicemen for non-combat duties.

Young died in 1922 and was only the fourth soldier to be honored with a funeral service at the Arlington Amphitheatre before burial in Arlington Cemetery.

“This is really special,” Dwyer said of the traveling exhibit. “It’s not just for Memorial Hall — it’s for Rockford.”